This article (published in June's Canadian Cinematographer magazine) provided a refreshing opportunity to restate what I've long believed-- that the visual storytelling tools of space, lenses, motion, staging, composition, lighting, and focus are essential to bringing strong stories to life on any screen and that the role of the cinematographer is a vital one in any medium. It's a bit of a cinematography-geek article, but for those of you who are interested, read on!

Many thanks to Fanen and to the CSC for publishing this and allowing me to repost it here.

To quote the 5D philosophy, worldbuilding is a “metaphor for the design and iteration process, creating and actualizing the story space in digital narrative media. It addresses the design thinking, the process, and the experience of creating new worlds for storytelling.”

The conference opened with a fantastic talk by Tom Wujec (Fellow, Autodesk), who posed an interesting question regarding the effects of exponential technological growth on creativity. If I’d been worried about work keeping me too busy to be in touch with major advancements, his mind-blowing examples confirmed it. A LOT has been changing incredibly rapidly and we all need to ponder his astute question.

Tom also quoted that creativity is the set of skills and processes that carry us from a moment of epiphany (ah-ha!) to the end result of innovative expression. So how does technology effect and enhance our creative process? Does its exponential growth allow us to be more creative, more efficient in our creativity, or simply result in us being more overwhelmed? Probably all three. But being an optimist, I prefer to see the whole as a positive, growing trend.

To quote another panelist, Rick Carter (Production Designer: Avatar), being overwhelmed is not necessarily a bad thing. He brought to mind the image from Pinocchio, of the fairy emerging out of whiteness, out of a nothing which is everything, to create the manifestation of a wish, of a dream in tangible, conscience-driven form. As filmmakers, imagemakers, storytellers, don’t we do that every day? And doesn’t the state of being overwhelmed sometimes lead us to a blankness that contains everything, inspiring new thought, innovation, and spectacular opportunity for creativity?

The first evening in the series dealt with inception, or how ideas are born and how we spark our creativity, with a lively and philosophical conversation between panelists Rick Carter, Michael Wilkinson (Costume Designer: Man of Steel, 300), Tom Wujec, and Rick Jaffa (Screenwriter, Rise of the Planet of the Apes).

What resonated most for me was that starting from character and story, we have the opportunity to develop an elemental metaphor that expresses the story’s main theme or the main character’s journey. This metaphor or core image then becomes something that can guide the cinematic design, exploring its expression through every creative voice in the film—colour, movement, composition, space, texture, light, editorial pacing, sound, silence, dialogue, music, gesture, expression, etc. This cinematic design provides a framework for collaboration, creative play, and unified vision between the director, production designer, cinematographer, editor, writer, and other creative keys as the film evolves.

Ultimately, we all agreed on several key points—that world building provides a rich and evolving source of inspiration for story and narrative, often spanning much more than the film or creative vision that initially motivated its creation, that cinematic design allows the director to guide the overall vision in service of story and final expression through collaboration with all of the creative keys within that world, and that the future of narrative story-telling based in any given well-developed world has the potential to be expressed through a wide variety of media and products, from films, to television shows, to games, to books, social media installations, and beyond.

Practically speaking, I find this all incredibly exciting, and I feel that previsualization (or visualization or prototyping) is a perfect space in which to exercise this creativity and enable it to flourish. It gives us a common ground to play in, concrete imagery to respond to, and context to work within while supporting change, organic evolution of ideas, and progressive refinement of the vision. The future of compelling and strongly unified storytelling is bright!

08/04/2011

This is a common question people ask when I refer to cinematic design in speaking about my work or in lectures about visual storytelling, cinematography, or previsualization. This term is one I first turned to when developing the filming plan for Finding Nemo to describe the overarching visual story design of a film. And I think it nicely sums up what previsualization can help filmmakers define as they shape the vision of their projects.

For me, cinematic design is the telling of visual story expressed through a unified vision of cinematography, production design, and editorial shape. The cinematic design sets the stage for (and responds to) performance. If you're trying to tell a visually strong and compelling story, it's vital to consider the end product as a cohesive whole, such that the individual parts work together to strengthen the message and emotion. Cinematic design is like a visual score for a film. In the way that the score and sound design of a film support and relate to the story through the interplay of various voices, instruments, sounds, musical themes, and silence, cinematic design defines the orchestration of visual themes and arrangement of the various visual storytelling voices.

In listening to a successful piece of music, we are usually unconscious of each individual voice or sound component, because the interplay and tuning of their contributions is what is so powerful and moving. A composer carefully develops and structures themes, determines the arrangement of instruments to play them, and conducts a group of musicians to shape the tempo, volume, and intensity as appropriate for the performance, for the desired mood, emotion, and creative expression. This is not so different from the phases we take a film through—development (composing), preproduction (arranging), and conducting a performance (production). In music, we never imagine the elements of an orchestra working discretely or sequentially—of course musicians practice their craft individually and sections practice their parts, but an orchestra and its conductor remain focused on the whole from the perspective of the final execution, making it the best it can be.

I frequently hear people say they don't like "rules". There's a big difference between "rules" and design. A painting with no design and every colour thrown in is hardly communicative, evocative, or good on virtually any scale. Cinematic design is similar-- it emphasizes consciously selecting and architecting an overall style and palette for the film, but not one restricted just to colour-- rather, a palette taking into consideration all the myriad of applicable visual devices: line, colour, shape, space, lens, staging, quantity of light, quality of light, movement, eye fix, editorial pacing, etc., and determining which will dominate and which will be used specifically to underscore the emotion and story. It is the composition of story-enhancing visual themes and the basic arrangement of how the visual storytelling voices will work together during production to create a unified and compelling final performance.

This is a subtle, powerful, and often-overlooked aspect of filmmaking. As I often heard during my years at Pixar-- if it's in the frame, it's on the screen, and it should strengthen the story. And doing that takes planning and structure-- cinematic design.

08/01/2011

If you like the thrill of supernatural horror films or if you've enjoyed the other four chapters in this series of suspenseful flicks, you should check out Warner Brothers' upcoming feature Final Destination 5.

Directed by Steven Quale and shot in 3D, Final Destination 5 will be in theatres August 12. Twenty One Inc contributed to the previsualization of the movie, particularly the gymnastics sequence, the laser surgery sequence, the factory sequence, and final climactic sequence. Warning: not for the faint of heart...

09/08/2010

Here is an interview done by HFF Academy at this year's Insight Out conference (March 2010). I gave a talk on previs at the conference, but this interview was conducted separately, and gave me more of an opportunity to express my personal point of view and philosphy regarding previsualization and its role in filmmaking.

08/30/2010

Check out this fantastic documentary on previsualization put together by Autodesk and The Previsualization Society. It represents a variety of insightful perspectives on this beneficial, collaborative, and crucial element of modern-day filmmaking.

07/16/2010

Here is a recent previsualization we did for a live-action commercial. Of course, everything you see would be replaced by real elements on location during production. Everything we've created is to real-world scale so you can analyze the previs for how to achieve the shots in live-action.

We always shoot our footage a little long, allowing for coverage so that an editor can cut the scene creatively. Since the edit is where things ultimately come together, it's wonderful to be able to shape the shots and staging in synergy with the cut. This helps the filmmaker get to the core of what a piece is trying to say and to strengthen the elements that tell the story. During production, a director can rely on this experience to make strong decisions in context, efficiently and clearly.

In addition to bringing the opportunity to cost-effectively experiment and revise choices to live-action filmmaking, previs also becomes an indispensable communication tool for everyone in production-- for camera, lighting, and set design crews, management, actors, vfx artists, and everyone else! During preproduction, the director and producer have the chance to work through the vision between themselves and other key stakeholders in an intimate, creative setting designed to support rapid-revision, experimentation, and problem-solving. Then production can be about performance, about doing the best possible job of making a high-quality piece, with everyone on the same page.

06/20/2010

I happen to be teaching at The Animation Workshop in Denmark right now, and among other things, I’ve been working with the students on log lines for their graduation films. And it’s reminded me yet again how valuable constructing a log line is. Not just for being able to succinctly pitch your project, but for really digging down into the heart of what the story is. Not only that, but it proves to be an incredibly valuable tool in honing in on how to best structure the film visually in terms of its cinematic design (the holistic design supporting the story through the unification of production design, editorial shape, staging, and cinematography).

When I develop a log line, I start with describing who the character is at the core, and to do that, I also examine what the character wants in the story. Even more importantly, I look at what will happen if s/he fails--what the stakes are. Because in confronting the main issue in the climax, we discover the most pivotal element for the main character... it should be the opposite quality, the thing that will be most threatened, where the character has the most to lose. In other words, if the main character confronts betrayal, then loyalty must be important to him; if the main character confronts failure, then perhaps she is a perfectionist. Of course, the log line also presents what form the antagonistic forces in the story will take, but this sense of opposition between what the character holds most dear and what will be threatened or at stake in the story is vital. Positioned correctly, this allows for irony in the story (and in the log line) that makes it both compelling and worthy of telling.

This ironic element, this pivotal piece that makes us want to watch or listen to the story to see how it will unfold, is often also the key to a compelling cinematic design. Once identified, you can explore how to support or contrast line, shape, space, value, colour (hue, saturation, and temperature), movement, and rhythm to deepen the expression of the central issue and the strongest arc in the story.

This sounds simple, but building a strong log line is difficult, challenging you to drive into the purest form of the narrative. Once you’ve found that, it becomes a solid base to build upon, both in terms of the story and its visual expression. It’s also a good reminder that in a visual medium such as film, these two explorations (the story and its visual expression) belong hand-in-hand.

05/27/2010

Here is an example of previs for an animated commercial. What I love about working in animation is how much everything can be designed to underscore the story and emotion. One of the best things about previs, is that it can bring this kind of thinking and control to live action filmmaking as well.

What we really enjoyed about this little piece was the emphasis on lighting as a part of telling the story. Typically, lighting is difficult to do early in the CG process. But the way we work at Twenty One Inc, we are able to design and implement lighting right up front at the start of set design.

Our approach also heavily emphasizes a close relationship with the production design process, and we encourage a strong back-and-forth work flow to capture the best of what the design and the cinematography have to offer in terms of telling the story and influencing one another.

05/23/2010

When I lecture on cinematic design and visual storytelling (which I've been doing a lot recently), people often ask me "There are so many possibilities, so many visual devices-- how do I figure out a design for MY story?" A huge key to this is presented in a great book by Bruce Block (of USC): The Visual Story. I clearly remember when Block came to lecture to us at Pixar many years ago-- it made a very deep impact on me and my understanding of cinematic craft.

In his book, Block states a very simple, but exceedingly useful principle: the more contrast (within a frame, between frames, or across a film), the greater the visual (and therefore emotional) intensity; the less contrast, the less the visual intensity. So in other words, you can plot out the story emotionally in terms of intensity and then select a few key visual devices, such as colour, shape, line, and/or value and determine where you want more contrast and where you want less. This can become a very powerful tool for architecting your visual structure in a way that supports the story.

Another thing I hear lots of people say is that they don't like "rules". There's a big difference between "rules" and design. A painting with no design and every colour known to man thrown in is hardly communicative, evocative, or good on virtually any scale. Cinematic design is similar-- it emphasizes consciously selecting an overall style and palette for the film, if you will, but not one restricted just to colour-- rather, considering all the myriad of applicable visual devices: line, colour, shape, space, lens, staging, quantity of light, quality of light, movement, eye fix, editorial pacing, etc. and determining which will dominate and which will be used specifically to underscore the emotion and story.

Cinematic design is a subtle, powerful, and often-overlooked aspect of filmmaking. And it's free for the taking-- every shot has to be designed and considered anyway; it costs nothing to do so in a meaningful and story-enhancing way...

Helmed by Pixar veteran cinematographer and live-action filmmaker Jericca Cleland, Twenty One Inc is a development & preproduction studio offering dynamic, high-quality previsualization services for live-action and animated films, tv, games, and commercials. Do more with less!